Users were so accustomed to sites that "flashed, revolved, and
asked you to punch the monkey," that they kept waiting for the
page to finish loading, Google employee Marissa Mayer said at the
time.

That's why they weren't searching for anything: Google's site was
so unorthodox that users got fed up while they thought they were
waiting for Google.com to fully load.

"We wound up sticking a copyright tag at the bottom of the page,
not so much because we needed a copyright on the page, but
because it was a way to say 'This is the end,'" Jen Fitzpatrick,
engineering VP, told Bock. Apparently, that fixed the problem and
Google took pride in the fact that it never added ads or other
distractions.